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Michael Perino

Professor

Michael Perino is currently the Dean George W. Matheson Professor of Law at St. John’s University School of Law in New York. Professor Perino’s primary areas of scholarly interest are securities regulation and litigation, corporations, class actions, and judicial decision making. Professor Perino has also been a Visiting Professor at Cornell Law School (2005), the Justin W. D’Atri Visiting Professor of Law, Business and Society at Columbia Law School (2002), and a Lecturer and Co-Director of the Roberts Program in Law, Business, and Corporate Governance at Stanford Law School (1995-1998).

Professor Perino is the author of The Hellhound of Wall Street: How Ferdinand Pecora’s Investigation of the Great Crash Forever Changed American Finance (Penguin Press 2010). TheHellhound of Wall Street won the Citi Private Bank Financial History of the Year prize, and the book was named as one of the best books of 2010 by Bloomberg/Business Week, the Library Journal, and Progressive magazine. Professor Perino is the author of the leading treatise on the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Securities Litigation under the PSLRA (CCH 2000), as well as numerous articles and monographs on securities regulation, securities fraud, and class action litigation. He has testified in both the United States Senate and the House of Representatives and is frequently quoted in the media on securities and corporate matters. Professor Perino’s comments have appeared and his research has been profiled in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Business Week, the Financial Times, Forbes, Fortune, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many others. Professor Perino has also appeared on This American Life, All Things Considered, Morning Edition, Marketplace, Bill Moyers Journal, and on the BBC, Bloomberg Television, and CNBC.

The SEC has retained Professor Perino to provide it with a report and recommendations on the adequacy of arbitrator conflict disclosure requirements in securities arbitration. Professor Perino was also one of the principal developers of Stanford Law School’s Securities Class Action Clearinghouse, which was nominated by the Smithsonian Institution for the 1997 Computerworld-Smithsonian Award as one of the five most important applications of information technology created by an educational institution. In 2008, he received the U.S Chamber of Commerce’s award for outstanding research on legal reform issues.

Professor Perino received his LL.M. degree from Columbia Law School, where he was valedictorian, a James Kent Scholar, and the recipient of the Walter Gellhorn Prize for outstanding proficiency in legal studies. He received his J.D. from Boston College Law School, where he was elected to the Order of the Coif.

Book Chapters

Have Institutional Fiduciaries Improved Securities Class Actions? A Review of the Empirical Literature on the PSLRA’s Lead Plaintiff Provision, in Handbook of Institutional Investment and Fiduciary Duty (Cambridge University Press 2013). SSRN: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2175217.

Is Securities Arbitration Fair for Investors?, Written Testimony of Professor Michael A. Perino Before the Subcommittee on Capital Markets, Insurance, and Government Sponsored Enterprises of the Committee on Financial Services, United States House of Representatives (March 17, 2005).

What We Know and Don't Know About the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Written Testimony of Michael A. Perino Before the Subcommittee on Securities of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate (Oct. 29, 1997).

A Census of Securities Class Action Litigation After the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Written Testimony of Michael A. Perino Before the Subcommittee on Securities of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate (July 24, 1997).

Ten Things We Know and Ten Things We Don't Know About the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, Joint Written Testimony of Joseph A. Grundfest and Michael A. Perino Before the Subcommittee on Securities of the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, United States Senate (July 24, 1997).